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The Future of Conservatism

Posted by Ron Piekaar on Wednesday, February 06, 2008 4:02:05 PM
Of the many lessons that can be taken from the results of Super Tuesday's elections, the ascendance of John McCain, as the clear front runner on the Republican side, is significant. It is especially significant because he seems to have pulled off this clear victory in spite of the urgent and forceful attempts of right wing talk radio to discredit him and to sway the vote in favor of Mitt Romney.

The lesson for talk radio? There are several.
 
One major lesson is that despite what is touted to be huge audiences of staunch conservatives, numbering in the millions, who hang on every word of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingram, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and others, Mitt Romney still finished a dismal third in a field of three, which is a polite way of saying he finished dead last. This, in the face of enormous cash outlays on Mitt's part and a constant barrage of dire warnings of the impending implosion of America as we know it on talk radio's part if John McCain were to ever become president.

And what was John's mortal sin, according to these self proclaimed bastions of all conservative knowledge? Well, apparently he isn't conservative enough. A fact which, in light of his Super Tuesday victory, speaks volumes about the apparent disconnect between right wing talk radio and its intended audience. The inference could easily be drawn, from the results of this election, that either right wing talk radio hosts have lost touch with the true feelings and mood of their target audience, or conservatism in America is redefining itself, or both.

It would not be difficult to understand how a talk radio host, such as Rush Limbaugh for instance, could be suffering from a disconnect with his audience. His program is, more often than not, very heavy on the strong opinions of "El Rushbo" and very light on interaction with his callers. The interactions that do occur are usually from callers who have endured sometimes hours of waiting on 'hold' and who, when they finally do get to speak to "the great one", introduce themselves as "ditto heads". All this is well and good, and very entertaining but also very limiting in terms of the host getting any real information concerning the moods and feelings of all but an almost insignificant number of his listeners. Other such radio shows suffer from the same malady. Guests invited to weigh in on various topics of discussion on these various shows are also drawn heavily from the far right. Dr. James Dobson is an example. The net result is a cadre of right wing radio talk show hosts who have deluded themselves into thinking that just because they have large listening audiences, that those listeners are also marching in lock step with every element of conservative doctrine espoused by the radio host. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The evidence for a major evolution in conservative philosophy in America can be found in the actions of the conservative voters on Super Tuesday. Traditional conservatism has apparently given way to a new and more enlightened tolerance. In a historical sense the old conservative roots, that so strongly influenced the beliefs and behaviors of those who built this nation, called for the genocide of an entire race of human beings in order to protect an angry god from the stench of their existence. Those same conservative roots also condoned slavery and the treatment of blacks and women as second class citizens; a fact also supported by the perversions of the religious tenants of traditional conservatism.
Today, some who call themselves conservative still defend bigotry, intolerance, homophobia and misogyny by citing the same religious sources.

Without wanting to read too much into the McCain victory on Super Tuesday, I hope that it demonstrates the beginning of the end of the most unsavory elements of the conservative philosophy. Those elements that have sought to keep us divided and that have been the ugly justification for the subhuman treatment of many among us who have committed no crime other than to have had the poor judgement to have been born different. The Old Testament god told his followers to exclude all people from entering his holy temple who had certain physical imperfections. Unfortunately, some of that same insanity persists within the hard core of the conservative philosophy. It is the outright rejection of that portion of conservatism that I hope was exemplified in the McCain victory on February 5th. In having co-sponsored various pieces of legislation with certain Democrats, he has proven his ability to acknowledge good ideas from whatever source and has opened a dialogue that has been long overdue. I agree with Barach Obama that we are all one nation, but if you get your ideas from right wing talk radio, you may never come understand just what it takes, in practice, to actually live that belief. If the Right and the Left cannot find a way to work together,  America will not long survive. Right wing talk radio has not discovered that yet, but thankfully, its influence seems to be greatly diminishing because I think we, as a people, are getting smarter. 

 
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Health Care For The Rest Of Us

Posted by Ron Piekaar on Friday, February 01, 2008 3:45:28 PM

As one of the 40 some odd million Americans without health care, I resent the popular politically expedient assumption that I don''t have it because I can't afford it. Although there are probably many in that number who, indeed, cannot afford it, let it be known, for the record, that there are also millions of us counted in that number who do not want or need it.
There are three important and very rational reasons why millions of us do not want health care as it is administered today. One fundamental reason is that we have found a way to experience virtually free health care by having taken responsibility for our own bodies. We do that by seeing to it that we never knowingly or willingly ingest processed foods, foods laden with pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, hormones or other harmful chemicals and hydrocarbons. If we eat meat we eat only organic or range fed products that are certified organic by credible institutions other than the U.S.D.A. If we eat dairy products, the same criteria applies. We avoid all forms of processed sugars including chemical substitutes such as Equal, Splenda, NutraSweet, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame and the like, choosing instead wholesome and beneficial sweeteners such as Xylitol and Stevia and the like. We never use tobacco products and those of us who drink coffee prefer organic coffees in moderation. We ingest little or no alcohol and if wine is consumed on occasion, we prefer organic wines with no sulfites added.
The proof of the wisdom of being responsible for our own bodies is in the results.  As a group, studies have proven, time and time again, dramatic decreases in the incidents of all cancers, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, alzheimer's, and lung and liver diseases to name a few. All this without the aid of modern prescription medicine.
The second reason for our rejection of the health care system as we know it is that most, if not all of us prefer the holistic approach to health care and the insurance companies have not seen fit to pay for these methods of health care, that actually work, preferring instead to fund only so-called mainstream doctors as a direct link in the drug dispensing chain that supports the pharmaceutical companies. 
Natural methods that are known to cure disease are, to us, much preferable to the drug induced cover-up of chronic illnesses that actually have a cause and a cure. We believe that no illness has ever been caused by a lack of the right cocktail of  synthetic drugs flowing through the human body.
The third reason is economic. It costs something in the neighborhood of $1000 per month to insure a family of four under the current system. That's $12,000 per year and $564,000 over the working lifetime of the average individual, and even if that cost is shared by an employer it still remains the same overall cost. The truth is that only a tiny fraction of the insured population ever come anywhere close to racking up that kind of price tag in order to pay for any unforeseeable major illness. That means, in a nut shell, that it is cheaper to pay the doctor when and if the time comes than to pay the insurance company each month, from a mindset of fear that if we don't we will surely die. The system is also inflationary due to the fact that it promotes higher demand on the system. Health insurance is like having a credit card. It allows you to spend money that you don't have. Unlike car insurance where you have to have had a real accident in order to get coverage, health insurance allows you to go to the doctor any time you feel even the slightest bit off, whether you are really sick or not and, more importantly, whether the doctor can even help you or not. You can walk into the doctor's office with virtually a blank check in your hand, any time you feel like it, and run up a huge tab for no other reason than...you can. Economics 101 for Dummies can explain why that doesn't work in terms that I believe most of us can understand.
Our healthcare system in America is perpetuated by a constant barrage of fear on the one hand and consummate greed on the other. It is not about who gets healed, it's about who get paid. Our food industry is making us sick and obese and is playing right into the hands of the health care industry who is saying "take on of these and just keep doing what your doing". Actually healing this nation would be bad for both businesses. We are addicted to health care in this country and care virtually nothing about health. Until we can universally will ourselves to cure our own severe case of cranial-rectal inversion and take back our power over our own health on a massive scale, we will continue to suffer disease and will continue to be jerked around by a health care system that profits more from our illness than from our well being.

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Look At It This Way

Posted by Ron Piekaar on Thursday, January 31, 2008 8:51:43 PM
Several hundred years ago, numerous boatloads of political and religious malcontents left the comfort of their homes, their lands and their country of birth and risked the perils of the open seas in search of a new and better life. With a few handfuls of carry-on luggage, no toilet paper and only the clothes on their backs they eventually landed on the eastern coast of a new and foreign land. No, restaurants, no hotels, no Starbucks, no lodgings of any kind, not even an outhouse greeted them as they came ashore. With only sand and a tree line in front of them and only a huge ocean behind them, they somehow survived the first night. No one was whining about the economy, no one was worried that none of them had health care and not one of them complained that of all the places that they could have landed, the place that they did land was apparently completely devoid of modern dentistry and fast food restaurants. Back home the agents of religious fanaticism, in the guise of the Roman Catholic Church, were torturing, murdering, confiscating lands, burning innocents at the stake and otherwise acting exactly like the fanatical Islamists of today, only with less sophisticated weapons.
It would be safe to say, of that brave little group, that not a liberal was among them. Homeland security meant finding a new homeland and putting nearly three thousand miles of open sea between you and a religion gone completely insane. Were you cold? Yes. Were you hungry? Yes. Did you long for the loved ones left behind? With every fiber of your being. But you were alive and you, above all, were free. Your only hope was to survive and after that to make your sacrifice worthwhile by helping to build a new nation with new ideas.
Now we have come to a place in the evolution of our new idea where many who were once among us, as in days long ago, have left in search of a better place. Many modern day Americans who were born here, raised here, who had fought wars, raised their children, contributed to the common good with their strength of character, service, sacrifice and even a portion of their hard earned wages, have now left this country in search of a more peaceful atmosphere. How can this be?
Today, as we face this next and extremely important election, we can look out across the land and imagine, for the first time in this generation, what the atmosphere must have been like in America during the lead up to the Civil War. The polarization of the ideological elements among our common citizenry seems to have progressed to a level of irreconcilable intolerance. To add even more despair to this already bleak prognosis, not one of the candidates running for office in this election has been able to capture the imagination of a majority of us in any way that says they are interested in healing this massive wound.
A Republican vote is sure to disenfranchise at least half the population in the U.S. and a Democratic vote, the other half. But then Democrats don't care if half the population has to suffer through the next four to eight years...and neither do the Republicans. Therein lies the problem. We seem to have forgotten what we came here to create. If those brave souls who came in the beginning had thought for one moment that their sacrifice would lead to a time when fully half the nation during any given presidential administration would be longing to live almost anywhere else 'til it was over, they might have had serious second thoughts about starting this little experiment in freedom. Someone should put up a sign somewhere near the Statue of Liberty that says "Caution, Republicans in Charge" or " Caution, Democrats in Charge" depending on which happens to be true at the time.
It is painfully obvious that the issues that now divide us will only get worse until we can find a better way to appoint our highest elected officials. The next person to hold the office of the President of the United States must be a person who can make all of us feel proud and well represented. A person who can restore the respect of America among the nations and a person who can treat other nations and their officials and their forms of government with respect. A person who holds wisdom in higher esteem than knowledge and who holds imagination and hope in higher esteem than the false glories of anything in our past. I know of no such person and I hold no hope that one will emerge. Our so called two party system is not functionally capable of producing such a person. It is, in fact, that very system that has sought to divide us for its own political gain. We suffer for it but yet, is it not us who have allowed it to continue? We hold the keys to the power in our nation. A position and trust held by no other people on planet earth. Yet, every four years we do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. Our actions every four years fulfill the very definition of insanity and yet not enough of us see it to effect any kind of positive change. This time we say we want change. We said the same thing after Roosevelt and Truman and Eisenhower and after Nixon and Ford and Carter and after Reagan and Bush and Clinton. Now we say it again after another Bush and some of us are actually considering Clinton again. We are caught in a time loop of endless bad choices and wonder why, as a nation, we feel such tension in the air at this election time.
We need to find a good and descent person, a wise person, a truthful person. A person of compassion, sincerety and understanding. A person, above all, of character and integrity. A person who can unite all of us, defend all of us and lead all of us to become better versions of ourselves. Who can lead on day one is hardly the issue. Who we all will still honor and respect and become increasingly proud of is the issue so that by day one thousand and day two thousand and even on day two thousand nine hundred and twenty we will all still want to wish a fond fairwell. If you see that person, vote for them. This nation can ill afford another Bush or another Clinton and I hope we don't have to find out the truth of that the hard way.  
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